Blind Review: The Best Man Holiday

Disclaimer: Blind Reviews are fictional accounts of what I imagine happens in the movie based on the trailer and gratuitous leaps of faith. I have not seen the movie and the review should not be taken seriously in any way.

What do you get when you combine old friends, messy relationships, Christmas, and Blurred Lines? A flawed film that perfectly captures the zeitgeist of life, love, and friendship in the early to mid-2010s. The Best Man Holiday (BMH), sequel to 1999’s The Best Man, won’t change your life, but it will become a Christmas staple airing every holiday season on TBS. That will be enough to make it trend on Twitter once or twice a year which is basically all that matters these days. BMH is leap years ahead of 2013’s other reunion based sequel, Grown Ups 2.

Filled with a talented and multi-cultural cast, BMH has some of the best character acting you’ll see all year. It’s amazing that writer-director Malcolm D. Lee (Undercover Brother, Scary MoVie) could coax such great performances out of actors who have struggled of late. Terrence Howard turns in his best performance since he was the original James War Machine Rhodes (Rhodey) in Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man. Howard, who plays Quentin, in the film has an amazing chemistry with all of the key players, but specifically his rival Harper who is played by Taye Diggs. The rivalries here are top notch.

Not to be outdone by the guys, the ladies provide the film with the depth that will make BMH worth revisiting.  Regina Hall steals the show as Candace, a smart successful woman who any man would be lucky to have. The Mia and Shelby characters have a cat fight for the ages about Shelby’s risqué behavior. The tension here is real, but the whole fight is a lot of fun.

The film isn’t all great though. There’s literally a stretch of the film, almost 10 minutes, where several characters compare and contrast the major phone operating systems. As interesting as the battle between iOS and Android is, and how culturally likely we as Americans are to discuss phones at a holiday get together in 2013, I just didn’t enjoy it. I’d have left this scene on the cutting room floor. There’s also a song and dance number where the guys cover a popular Boyz II Men track that is complete filler. It adds nothing to the feature and makes no sense.

Despite its flaws, BMH is the perfect film for the whole family this Thanksgiving. Sure, there are some scenes that won’t be age-appropriate for the young ones, but they’re going to be seeing this stuff sooner or later. Why not let them learn it from these beautiful people in the controlled environment that is your local cinemaplex? You certainly wouldn’t want to take the kids to see the Hunger Games sequel which will have people killing each other. Let’s face it, there’s nothing worse than murder. Here’s to hoping The Best Man series will continue with The Best Man Divorce or The Best Man Funeral 15 years from now.

B-